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Summer '96: Beach Blanket Books: Anything Considered

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From: The Washington Post
Date: 19960728
Author:Michael Dirda

ANYTHING CONSIDERED

By Peter Mayle

Knopf. 303 pp. $23

A SUMMER BOOK should be like a vacation: lots of sun, a little romance, picturesque scenery, maybe a spot of danger or intrigue to start the pulse racing, but nothing too scary, nothing too real. Back in the heyday of light fiction, from roughly the 1920s through the 1950s, one might turn for such escapist fare to P.G. Wodehouse, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Thorne Smith, Agatha Christie, Rex Stout. No longer. Even our trifles now tend to be lumpy puddings, straining for effect, significance, wit. In some recent bestsellers it's ...

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